Tim hates you

Errr… Eww…

So today one of my clients lawyers calls me over an insurance matter. The story is rather complicated but I’ll give you a brief run down (while holding back names for anonymity and so they won’t get in trouble). There was an accident of some kind and there is going to be an insurance claim. However because of the structure of the contracts and so on the client isn’t going to get the full amount of the insurance. Unless I lie to the loss adjuster.

Yes.

My clients lawyer asked me to lie to the loss adjuster, effectively asking me to knowingly break the law and defraud the insurance company out of tens of thousands of pounds. I had to explain to her that it’s, you know, a slightly big issue. Fraud, that is. Oh well, no wonder we’re all in a mess. Dealing with such idiots.

So there I was sitting down to watch a movie, no not an Internet movie this time. Before the video started this came on.

Here’s a few problems though.

1) The people who sponsor these REALLY fucking annoying videos in the UK is called FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). There is a problem though. We don’t have laws in the UK for copyright theft. FACT’s name is misleading since there is no such offence within the United Kingdom of ‘Copyright Theft’ under the Theft Act 1968. When copyrighted material is copied it is not removing the material permanently from its owner. Copyright infringement is not theft, stealing or ‘twokking’ (taking without consent) as it is the possession of a copy or copies of copyrighted material without a suitable license from the owner.

2) It’s just annoying having to sit through these unskippable and largely irritating videos time and time again.

3) Also if I ever did illegally download a video and the transfer was going that fast (watch the progress bar it’s a screaming fast download!) I’d even download Christopher Lamberts Beowulf if it meant downloading at that speed!

Here’s a couple of spoofs that have amused me.

Here’s another one by The IT Crowd.

I love watching youtube so much it’s unhealthy.

I also have to admit the truth I want to burgle the house of the man who runs FACT. I want to steal his car, his wallet and his DVD collection.

So here are a bunch of interesting things going on with CES this year.

First of all there’s the new OLED Televisions out. Boy they’re pretty, pretty fucking expensive too at £1,700 a pop.

You know you want one, I know I want one, but I don’t have a spare arm and a leg at the moment, you know how it is, running to catch the bus, err enjoying Internet videos and typing this blog. All of it means I don’t have an arm and a leg spare. However if anyone wants to buy me one of these I’ll be very happy to take this off your hands.

Now my mate Ian would love this. A lot, not that he wouldn’t love the TV, but he’s got a beautiful Bravia already, the bastard. But he’s been getting into guitar hero a lot lately and this little doodad is just plain great.

This little beauty is known as the Riff Rocker, no word yet on a UK release, but if you want to while away some hours you can do a lot worse than this.  It comes shipped with the open source Frets on fire. It’s a cheap and fun knock off of the aforementioned guitar hero of course. But look at it! So tiny! So cute! So portable! So if you were lugging around say your laptop or a little netbook on holiday with you you could slap a couple of these in and have a whale of a time.

CES 2009 Mini plastic rhythm gaming guitar, The Riff-Rocker from Ars Technica on Vimeo.

Talking of netbooks the Sony Vaio P and the OQO Model 2+. I can’t go near these things because I’d be drooling so much my slobber would ruin them. They’re gorgeous, they’re tiny and they’re gonna cost you an arm, a leg, a kidney and one of your lungs. Not mine though (been living in London too long. Smoked too much, breathing in all the pollution means my lungs are only worth about 1/4 of the going price in a back street St Petersburg clinic.)

Here they are in all their lovely lovely glory.

I honestly don’t actually know what the hell I’d do with any of them to be honest, if I could ever actually buy one of these things. As an aside if you look at the actual filename of the OQO Model 2+ picture it’s called the “hershot.jpg”. I don’t know why but it made me giggle for a couple of seconds.

Anyway I’m off to watch some more Internet videos and send some text messages.